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Rebecca Swift, born in 1964, read English at Oxford University and has since worked as an editor and writer and Director of The Literary Consultancy (TLC). For seven years she worked at Virago Press, where she first conceived of the idea for TLC, which she co-founded in 1996. TLC offers professional editorial advice, mentoring and other services to writers working in all levels in the English language.
For Chatto & Windus she edited a volume of letters between Bernard Shaw and Margaret Wheeler, Letters from Margaret: The Fascinating Story of Two Babies Swapped at Birth (1992) and Imagining Characters: Six Conversations about Women Writers, a book of conversations between writer A.S. Byatt and psychoanalyst Ignês Sodré (1995).
Rebecca Swift has also had poetry published in Virago New Poets (1990),Vintage New Writing 6 (1995), Driftwood, US, (2005), and Staple (2008). A libretto written by Swift was funded by the Arts Council of England. The opera, composed by Jenni Roditi, and called 'Spirit Child', was performed at Ocean, Hackney, in London in 2001. Rebecca has also written and reviewed for The Independent on Sunday and The Guardian. A biography of Emily Dickinson, Dickinson: Poetic Lives, was published in 2011 by Hesperus Press and an essay 'Generations' in Granta online, 2012.
Rebecca Swift is an alumni trustee of the Writers' Centre Norwich, and the Maya Centre, as well as a founding member of Free Word, a centre for the promotion of literature, literacy and free expression based in London.
In 1999 she completed an M.A. in Psychoanalytic Studies at the Tavistock Centre in London and UEL. Her thesis title was ARE YOU READING ME? An Exploration of the Relationship between people who write and those who read them in the publishing and related industries.
Rebecca has appeared at numerous literary festivals and on many panels talking about the work of TLC and the relationship between writers and the publishing industry, and has taught poetry at an American conference in France and West Dean College of Further Education, and lifewriting for the Hackney Music Development Trust. She also teaches 'Approaches to Publication' as part of TLC's own Literary Adventure holiday in Spain.
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